By Verena Dobnik,
Associated Press
 NEW
YORK (AP) A cross-country skier glided down a road in Central
Park, not a car in sight. Lanterns from the Tavern on the Green
restaurant glowed faintly through a thick haze of swirling flakes.
The Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center had an unusual frosting
of white and kids sledded down the steps of a building on Wall
Street.
If there was
a day more beautiful than this in the city that never sleeps,
residents could not remember it.
''It's breathtaking!''
said Mailis Widlanski, her face beaming as she walked her great
Danes, Bugs and Bunny, through the park.
A record snowfall
clogged the city's streets Saturday, bringing out fleets of city
plows and salt spreaders and producing smiles on faces of people
lucky enough to have time to enjoy it.
''I kind of
like the snow like this. It makes Christmas and New Year's feel
a little more special,'' Bob Catene said as he shoveled the walk
in front of his Italian food store in Brooklyn. He appeared to
be losing the battle.
''It's going
to be hard to keep pace,'' he said. ''After this one I'll be snowed
out for the rest of the season.''
In Richmond
Hill, a Queens neighborhood filled with a snowy fog, 11-year-old
Becky Peter played ''snow football'' with a half dozen boys. The
object of the game: Throw a snowball into the snow, then jump
on top of it and everybody else.
''I had a
choice of playing snow football with my stupid brother Josh,''
said Becky, ''or playing Barbie-goes-skiing all by myself. Boys
aren't bad if you've got tons of snow as well.''
By early afternoon,
11 inches of snow had fallen in Central Park, a record snowfall
for Dec. 30. The old record was 2.9 inches, set in 1939. White
Plains, north of the city, had 14 inches, as did Valley Stream,
in Nassau County east of the city. Temperatures were in the upper
20s.
The metropolitan area's Kennedy, Newark and LaGuardia airports
all closed, stranding hundreds of would-be travelers.
''You can't
see any of the runways, it's completely white,'' Kristin Foschi
said at a terminal at LaGuardia. ''By the time a plow completes
a circle, it's covered again. It's really quite entertaining.''
Foschi had
planned to catch a plane with her 4-year-old triplets and two
other children to get to her great-grandmother's 100th birthday
in Dayton, Ohio, but after the airport closed they faced a drive
home to Stamford, Conn. ''I hope we make it!''
All bus service
in and out of the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan was
suspended, said spokesman Steve Coleman. But on Broadway, the
curtain went up as scheduled for Saturday's matinees.
Mayor Rudolph
Giuliani buoyantly said New York City can handle anything.
''Although
it's cold, it's not unbearable,'' he told reporters.
Asked if the
snow would interfere with the New Year's Eve celebration in Times
Square, Giuliani responded: ''Ha, ha!''
To back up
his bravado, the city posted big numbers: 1,600 plows, working
with 350 salt spreaders that dipped into a salt stockpile of 200,000
tons, all manned by some 2,500 sanitation employees working 12-hour
shifts.
Despite their
best efforts, more than 100 city buses got stuck on snow-clogged
roads, and a car pileup shut down the Jackie Robinson Parkway
near Cypress Hills in Queens.
|
